In 1969 when I was a freshman in college I used to visit my grandmother who lived just outside the city where the school was located. My younger brother would occasionally visit as well. We’d hang out , doing nothing except escape for a time whatever messes we were making with the rest of our lives. Grandmother would go to bed early, thus jettisoning my brother and I into the free time of nothing to do, nowhere to be, just total complete nothingness that needs to be filled. A scary moment. This once my brother decided to take a1 hallucinogen. I don’t recall if it was a tab of mescaline or LSD. He’d gotten it from a friend. Where else did we get something like that in those days? I know I didn’t take anything myself, as I was often the person cast in the role of designated flyer in these situations. Also, he most likely would not have shared. Wasn’t the sharing type when it came to those sorts of nutrients.
Anyway, he takes a tab. Since we didn’t think we were going anywhere, I turned on grandmother’s TV. This was 1969 remember, so we were watching a granular, convex, colorized somewhat blurry live video presentation on a glass-enclosed fluorescent screen shot by red, blue, and green electron guns. I don’t believe I cared to change the program, as there were only about three or four channels available. We watched, as we often did, starring into the flickering light, our minds drifting in and out of consciousness. Cave people sitting before a fire. We most assuredly watched for a time in silence, my brother absorbing the necessary chemicals needed for his brain engines to ignite. Liftoff was evident when Pete Seeger gets introduced on some variety show. I swear it was the Smothers Brothers, but hey.2 My brother makes a comment that forever defined for me Pete Seeger:
“He’s indestructible! Squeeze him through a TV tube and he still comes out Pete!”
We both certainly knew who he was.
My interest in all things banjo occurred around this time. Not because of this particular TV experience, more through the music— Bob, Joan, Kingston Trio, Taj Mahal, Ralph Stanley— all that.
Sometime during ’69-’71 I purchased a copy of “How the Play the 5-String Banjo”3. I cannot find my copy anywhere. I must have loaned it to someone, channeling Pete—
“Yeah, sure! no problem! I read the gosh-dern book a dozen times, got it memorized! Sure, bring it back anytime! I’m just glad there’s going to be another banjo picker in the world!” Right. Loaned along with Anthony Scaduto’s book on Bob Dylan and all my original BD records. What was I thinking? I wasn’t. I was stoned.
Lou, Lou, skip to my Lou. I learned hammer-ons, pull-offs. Not sure if I learned slides, those may have been from Earl Scruggs’ book. Frailing. And the quote on the back— “Can you read music? Not enough to hurt my playing!” Turns out there was a lot more in the book that I skipped or forgot or just didn’t pay any attention to, or most likely, absorbed because Pete was in the air, everywhere, like a song from Magical Mystery Tour. But grounding all the feel-good vibes, Pete liked to say he paid for his kids’ education with that little instruction book.
As the 70’s took hold my life partner ( or as Utah Philips, The Golden Voice of the Southwest, might put it “The woman who travels with me”) became involved with a group of musicians who titled themselves “People’s Music Network for Songs of Freedom and Struggle”4. There were ( and still are ) two gatherings, one in the winter and one in the summer. The summer events for a time were held at a camp in upstate New York. Upstate meaning somewhere close enough for an easy drive from NYC.
Pete frequented the summer retreats, as his schedule allowed. He was beginning to get up in years by then ( born in 1919!), but still plenty of energy. During a lunch break I got to talking to him about working with different kinds of musicians and expressing how lily white all these folk events seemed to be. ( I wasn’t known to be too subtle )
His response went something like this — “ When you’re making a poster, be sure to sketch a couple of drums. Black folks like to know there’s going to be rhythm in the music.” Now, say what you want, there is a lot of truth in that. And to talk not about what to play, or styles, or collaborations, or what songs drums might sound good on, he immediately went to the important part— getting your message out. Which for me at the time struck right to the heart of the matter— I didn’t have a message! Not one I could organize a poster around, never mind who might come to the concert. He did though— beginning with self-publishing that how-to banjo book in 1947. He’d been at it a long time. Getting the message out.
At these retreats I was prone to sleeping late. I’d rouse myself out of our tent to wander up to the meeting room/cafeteria for a morning joe provided by the counterculture/leftist/earth-based/tree-hugging/all-union, our bodies ourselves organizers that I categorized them to be. One morning I shuffled in, and was greeted by a full house of retreat participants, with Pete standing up in the center of the room. I then remembered that Pete had called for an important Sunday morning meeting at 9AM. The clock on the wall was well past that. As the screen door slammed behind me, Pete said “The revolution waits for no one.”
The last time I crossed paths with Pete Seeger was by far the sweetest and the most rewarding. After visiting my older brother ( who DOES NOT DO DRUGS ) in Corvallis I was taking a connecting flight from Eugene OR to Denver CO, on my way back to the East coast. (this must have been around 1988 or so) I wasn’t flying standby but I was in maybe in the last row of the plane, middle seat. Well lo and behold this tall gentleman dressed in bluejeans and work shirt sits down next to me, taking the aisle seat. Truly no one seemed to know who he was but I did. And, just to play with it a bit, I began in a rather loud voice “Aren’t you—??” and I have to tell you he gave me such a look I shut my big trap immediately! Which was okay because I wasn’t going to let on anyway. But he was friendly enough once he realized I wasn’t going to out him as a famous person. He told me he always gets an aisle seat in the back because then he can stretch out his long legs. True to form he munched on an apple and read Sing Out! Why would he do different?
I was reading Paul Hindemith’s Craft of Musical Composition vol I.5 I asked Pete what he thought of Hindemith’s work, both the writing and the composing. Pete didn’t have much to say about the writing, but about the composing he said “The proof’s in the pudding.” I thought this was so useful a comment, like, yes, there is theory, but then there’s what you do with the theory, and Pete was more interested in that part of the equation.
I don’t know how the conversation turned to the writings of Pete’s father, Charles Seeger, although Pete brought the subject up, and his words implied so much more I’m sure. Pete said “ He [Pete’s father Charles Seeger] wrote a lot on the subject [ music-making and theory ] that were a reach for most people to understand. I’m not sure if even he understood it.” Quite an admission.6 In a way, one could point to a life’s motivation— make music understandable. Certainly that’s what Pete did.
I asked Pete what music he was working on now. Once again, he answered so clearly and succinctly in a way that has only grown more relevant as I age. Pete said, “ I’m not learning so many new songs as trying to keep up with the ones I already know.”
I don’t know if it was the last thing we talked about, understand that each part of the conversation was intertwined with minutes of silence as I ate the tiny bag of pretzels the flight attendant handed out and Pete munched on his apple, but I asked him if he ever studied music, if there was any use to it.
He told me that yes, he did “study” music, but more to the point, it was when he heard a piece that pricked his ears, that posed a question he didn’t have an answer to. He said that when that happened he’d listen to it over and over until he understood whatever it was that answered the question. He didn’t let on to me what a question like that might be.
There was a song by Paul Winter that had posed such a question to him. Well, he said he’d built an ice skating rink out in his backyard and he told me that he made a cassette with the Paul Winter music repeated a number of times, so he could put on the tape and listen to it while he skated. The plane landed. We went our separate ways. Our paths never crossed again.
Katerina Witt won her first Olympic gold medal in Sarejevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina representing the German Democratic Republic— communist East Germany as it was referred to by the western press. She won her second Olympic gold in Calgary, Canada.
In the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway, Katerina Witt was the figure skating entry in the finals representing a united Germany. It was a time of several “firsts” for the skater, as it was the first time the Olympic committee allowed professional skaters to compete as amateurs. It was also the first Olympics for the presentation of a “united” German team after the reunification of East and West Germany in 1990.
Ms. Witt tells the story that she called Pete to ask his permission to use his song “Where Have All The Flowers Gone” in one of her skating programs for the competition.7 She wanted to use his song to ground her intention of bringing the world’s attention to the ongoing tragedy of the people of Sarajevo caught in the crossfire of a bloody civil war.
Meet the internationally famous ice dancing team of Seeger/Witt! Can’t you just imagine it? His lanky figure shuffling in a wobbly circle, etching out stick figure designs in the glassy ice, looking a little vulnerable in the center expanse of a cavernous arena, oblivious to an audience caught in hushed amazement while the indomitable Katerina Witt flawlessly completes a triple axle, her spinning razor sharp skates floating millimeters from Pete’s face, as the orchestra recording blasts through echoey loudspeakers, swelling in grand crescendo a humble melody whose final unspoken words end not with a conclusion but with a question.
Meanwhile, Pete, who skates slowly yet firmly, hands tucked behind his back, chin up and head held high, remains completely unconcerned about his safety because he has perfect faith in her craft, as she does in his.
Indeed, where have all the flowers gone?
Footnotes:
1 for you old-fashioned grammarians– an hallucinogen
2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHETC5qAnqo
3 https://www.fretboardjournal.com/features/banjo-bible-pete-seegers-book-launched-thousand-fingers/
4 https://www.peoplesmusic.org/
5 Paul Hindemith, “Craft of Musical Composition Vol I Theory” Associated Music Pub. New York, 1945
6 In reviewing Charles Seeger’s work, he (CS) refers to this very idea that Pete told me. from “Studies in Musicology 1935-1975” (University of California Press 1977): “Charles Seeger, in conversation with Boris Kremenliev : “ Curt Sachs remarked afterward [a paper by CS] was interesting but he didn’t understand it. Kremenliev then asks “What did you say? [in response to Curt Sachs] . Charles Seeger : “I don’t know. Something to the effect that now that I had presented it I wondered if I understood it also.” pg 102
7 https://www.katarina-witt.de/en/figure-skating-olympic-champion-1984.html
HinjNoiz 